In the square of San Daniele del Friuli, on the right side of the Cathedral, we find the Guarneriana library built in 1466: as well as the oldest public library in Friuli, which was created to accommodate the donation of 173 manuscript codes, the collection of the fifteenth-century humanist Guarniero d’ Artegna.
Today it preserves over 600 manuscripts, many of which are richly illuminated, including the precious Byzantine Bible from the end of the 12th century and a handwritten witness of the Divine Comedy from the end of the 14th.
The ancient heritage is also rich in about 80 incunabula, including a Justinian Codex printed in Venice in 1482 with a splendid miniature representing the emperor Justinian himself, and over 700 sixteenth-century books, and other works from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries for a total of about 12,000 ancient printed volumes.
It’s a heritage of the Guarneriana Library of San Daniele one of the oldest copies in the world of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is now available to anyone in a digitally browsable edition in the Guarneriana Digital Library, on the website. http://www.turismoaccessibile.fvg.it/sito/listing/biblioteca-guarneriana/
